


Mixed Drinks

by cassandramortmain



Category: The Rook (TV 2019)
Genre: Drinking & Talking, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21924439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandramortmain/pseuds/cassandramortmain
Summary: A hivemind and an amnesiac walk into a bar. Bronwyn's plan worked AU.
Relationships: Gestalt (The Rook) / Myfanwy Thomas
Comments: 24
Kudos: 66





	1. Chapter 1

Myfanwy was at a bar in Corfu when she spotted the first Gestalt.

She was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to be at the bar, actually. Bronwyn wouldn’t like it. Not that Myfanwy had to care about what Bronwyn wanted; not at all; Myfanwy was thirty-one years old now — sort of — she was a grown woman, and Bronwyn couldn’t tell her what to do. Myfanwy was still the big sister. 

Even if it sort of felt like it was the other way around most of the time, these days. What with Bronwyn being the only one who actually knew what they were on the run from, and how to do the running. What with Bronwyn being the one who told Myfanwy what to do and when and never, ever why. What with Bronwyn being the only one who actually remembered the past fifteen years.

Even so. Myfanwy was an adult, and she didn’t have to answer to anyone. Which was why that night, Myfanwy had done the adult, mature, reasonable thing and waited until Bronwyn was asleep to sneak out of their dingy little safehouse apartment and go get trashed at a tourist bar. 

She just needed a little break. A break from Bronwyn, and her incessant bossiness, and from the way she looked at Myfanwy like she was still sixteen. A break from brooding over the letter she’d found in her pocket, the one she still hadn’t told Bronwyn about, and the two keys that came with it. A break from thinking about what her power had done for her three days ago. 

She was just going to take one night and stop thinking about everything. Instead she would drink and flirt and maybe dance and maybe even kiss someone cute, who knows.

Half an hour in she felt she had made respectable progress towards her goal. She’d finished her first beer and was halfway through her second, starting to feel a pleasant little buzz, and she was debating a round of shots. Plus she’d struck up a nice flirtation with the man at the table next to her, Aris or Andrew or something like that. Anthony maybe? It wasn’t that important.

“Does it ever seem mad to you,” she said to whatever his name was, “that you can just walk into a bar, I mean any bar you like, even an American one where you have to be twenty-one, and order shots if you want to?”

Aris-Anthony-Andrew laughed. “There aren’t any American bars here.”

“No but I mean, the principle of the thing,” Myfanwy explained. “Like just a little while ago, you were a kid, yeah? You had to sneak your alcohol in if you wanted it, steal it from your parents or something. People felt like they had a right or a duty or something to stop you drinking and you didn’t have any say over it at all yourself. And now it’s no one’s business but your own! You can just go out and buy whatever you like if you’ve got the money, and no one can say anything at all about it. Isn’t that mad to you?”

What’s his face was still laughing. “You’re a crazy girl,” he said. He trailed his fingers over her arm. 

Myfanwy grinned and let him do it for just a moment, and then pulled her arm playfully out of his reach. She tossed her hair — and that move probably worked differently in her head than it did in real life, now; she kept forgetting that at some point in the past fifteen years she’d apparently decided to wear it short — and that’s when she saw the man in the corner of the bar watching her. 

He was being discreet about it, she gave him points for that. He was sitting with his back to her, facing the bar, but there was a mirror hanging behind the bar and she could see that his eyes were trained towards her reflection in it. 

Very blue eyes. She’d always liked blue eyes. Blond hair wasn’t her thing, necessarily, but she wasn’t opposed out of principle, and this man seemed to be making it work for him. Honestly with those cheekbones he could probably make any hair color work for him. So then why not? In the mirror she caught his gaze and held it. 

The man’s eyes widened, as though he’d gotten caught at something he hadn’t meant to, and he looked quickly away.

Shy. Myfanwy tossed her hair again and turned back to what’s his face. She had better things to do with her time than chase down someone shy. 

“Shall we do some shots, then, crazy girl?” said … Aris, she was pretty sure. It was a Greek name and it started with an A. “Tequila maybe?

Myfanwy felt her face fall. “I honestly don’t even know if I like tequila,” she confessed. It was one of those things she couldn’t remember.

This kept happening to her. Things would be going fine, she’d feel absolutely normal, as though she was like any other thirty-something woman holidaying her way through Greece, and then she’d stumble into the big black hole of her memory.

Fifteen years gone. Fifteen years where she should have worked all of this stuff out — whether or not she liked tequila, if she preferred jogging or yoga, what sort of clothes she liked to wear, what she wanted to do for a living — and she had absolutely nothing to show for it. It was all gone.

Involuntarily she glanced back at the mirror over the bar. The blond man was watching her again, and this time when she caught his gaze he held it long enough that when she looked away her cheeks felt hot. 

She really did like blue eyes. She liked intense blue eyes.

“You’ve never had tequila?” what’s his face exclaimed. “You’re joking!” He had his hand on top of hers again. 

Myfanwy bit her lip. It felt nice, the contact. It wasn’t unpleasant. And it was part of what she was here for. 

But she wasn’t sure.

Her body had craved being touched lately, as though no one had touched her for a very long time. Which made sense, if half of what Bronwyn had told her had been true: that she’d been locked up in some sort of EVA cult, that they’d brainwashed her and isolated her. Of course she would have gotten touch starved. There couldn’t have been a lot of casual physical contact with other people in that sort of life. Or if there was it would have been all creepy and culty. Mandated group hugs every day at noon. Communal bathing. Myfanwy was lucky she didn’t remember it. 

It was just odd, to not remember it but to be left with the after effects. This feeling that something was missing. This empty, gnawing ache for someone else’s skin against hers. 

But if she wanted to be touched, there was a simple solution. Its name was what’s his face, who was now rubbing his thumb in circles against her palm. 

So then why was Myfanwy pulling her hand away?

“I think I need another beer, actually,” she said, standing. 

“I can get you one, crazy girl,” what’s his name said. His eyes crinkled when he smiled. It was a nice smile. He was a nice man. Not very interesting to talk to, maybe, but no one could really be that interesting in a crowded tourist bar. What was she doing?

“No, that’s all right,” Myfanwy said. “I’ll get it. But it was nice meeting you, er.” 

It was just that he wasn’t her type, she decided, heading towards the corner of the bar. And why should she settle for picking up someone perfectly nice who wasn’t her type when she had other options?

This was one of those things she probably would have already known about herself, if she could remember those fifteen missing years. Or if she’d spent those fifteen missing years somewhere that wasn’t a cult. That nice was fine, but what she was into was someone with a little more … intensity, maybe. 

She leaned against the bar next to the blond man. “So are you going to buy me a drink, or what?” she asked. 

The man seemed faintly stunned for just a moment, and Myfanwy wondered whether maybe she would have been better off sticking with her sure thing after all. Then he recovered, cocked an eyebrow at her. “Would you like a drink?” he said. “You seem to be doing all right on your own.” Up close she could see the carefully groomed stubble on his cheeks, the fastidiousness of his clothes. Expensive looking jacket and a shirt buttoned all the way up, crisp crease in the trousers.

A control freak, then. An intense control freak. 

Like her. That was one of the things she didn’t need fifteen years’ worth of missing memories to work out about herself: she liked to be in control, too.

“I just think it’s polite,” Myfanwy said, “if you’re staring at a girl in a bar, to offer her a drink. Common courtesy, really.” 

The man looked affronted. “I wasn’t staring,” he protested. 

Myfanwy raised an eyebrow. 

“I glanced in your direction a few times,” he said. 

She kept her eyebrow up. 

“Fine,” he said. He inclined his head towards the bartender. “House red for the lady.”

“I don’t like it,” Myfanwy said boldly. “Wine’s not my thing, and when I drink it I only ever drink white.” 

In fact red wine was like tequila: something she didn’t remember drinking. In school she and her friends had always pilfered beer and cider and vodka from their parents’ liquor stashes, because wine seemed too grown-up and pretentious to chug out of a red solo cup at a house party. Presumably she had tried wine in the time since then, and for all she knew she might love it. 

But something about this man made her want to push back, to fight, like an itch under her skin. Like it could be a game the two of them would play.

The man’s expression went blank, and she felt a pang of unexpected disappointment. “Whatever she likes, then,” he told the bartender, and the bartender turned expectantly towards Myfanwy.

Now she was stuck. She slid her eyes towards the man’s drink to see if maybe she could match him, but he had a glass of something brown in front of him, like whiskey or scotch or something, and she had absolutely no idea if she was the kind of person who could get away with drinking brown liquor or if she was the kind of person who would choke and sputter at the first swallow. That was cute enough at sixteen but not so much at thirty-one. 

She could just get another beer. But it didn’t seem quite right for the context, somehow. And obviously she couldn’t order wine now.

“Gin martini, please,” she said, more or less at random, and slid onto the barstool next to the man. “So what’s your name?”

“Robert Gestalt.”

“Alice Smith,” Myfanwy said. Bronwyn had drilled her on that alias over and over again, but it still didn’t trip off her tongue all that easily. Still, she could see the need for it. The world wasn’t exactly full of Myfanwys, and if that cult ever wanted to come after her there was no need to make it easy for them. “So, Robert. Why were you watching me?” 

He didn’t seem able to look directly at her now she was next to him, stayed turned towards the bar instead. His face was still blank. Perhaps that was just his resting expression. “I suppose I wanted to know …” he began, and then his voice trailed off.

The bartender deposited the martini in front of Myfanwy and she tried a tentative sip. “Wanted to know what?” The martini was pretty nice, actually. 

He turned to face her at last, looking right into her eyes. Myfanwy felt herself shivering. It was something, to have all that unblinking intensity pointed at her full blast. “I wanted to know if you were happy,” he said. “Alice.”

Myfanwy’s mouth quirked in bemusement. “Am I happy?” she repeated. 

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m on holiday on a beautiful Greek island without a care in the world and you want to know am I happy?” she said. 

“Yes,” he said again. 

It was a line. It was the sort of thing broody bad boys with eyes like that would trot out to show the girls that they were soulful, really, and that they could see your inner pain. 

He sounded so sincere.

It was kind of a weird line. 

Myfanwy tried for a laugh, but she could hear it wasn’t quite convincing. “Do I look unhappy?” she managed. 

He tilted his head to the side, and Myfanwy squirmed. She felt like he was pinning her into place with his eyes, like she was a butterfly and he was trapping her under glass. Not at all flirtatious, but her heart rate was picking up all the same. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “Are you?”

Myfanwy framed and discarded several possible answers internally. Finally she settled on saying, “That’s a very personal question, Robert Gestalt.” 

He finally smiled at that, and he looked so sad. “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose it is.”

“Well, don’t look so glum,” Myfanwy said. She didn’t owe him anything, she knew that, but she wanted to see if she could make him give her a real smile. She wanted to see what that would do to his eyes. “I just mean that I need at least one more drink before I’ll answer it.” 

The smile turned a shade less wistful, a touch more playful, and Myfanwy felt a rush of triumph. “Ah,” he said, and clinked his glass against hers. “Then we’d better get to work.” 

“Cheers,” said Myfanwy, and took a less tentative sip of her martini this time. For something she’d chosen for no reason at all it was shaping up to be a good choice: she liked the clean sharpness of it, and she liked the way the glass felt, cradled in her hand. It was the kind of thing a real adult woman would drink, the kind of adult woman who could remember her twenties. “So what are you doing in Corfu?” she asked. “Besides investigating the emotional state of strange women.” 

Robert lifted his hand up towards his jaw, thumb first, and then frowned at his fingers and brought his hand sharply back down to the bar. “I am on holiday,” he said, as though trying out the concept for the first time. “With my siblings.”

“Me too,” Myfanwy said. “Well, sibling. Well, my sister. My little sister. It’s just the two of us. How many are there of you?”

He looked downright amused at that. She didn’t know what he thought was so funny but his eyes were melting into something warm and fond. Point to Myfanwy. “Four,” he said. 

“Big family,” she said, since he seemed to like this topic, but he only shrugged as though it didn’t interest him. 

“Do you and your sister get on?” he asked.

Myfanwy wrinkled her nose, considering, and took another swallow of martini. “Yeah,” she said. “Or, well. It’s weird with us right now.” 

“How so?” His eyes were intent on hers.

“It’s like —” Myfawny paused, trying to find the words. Another swallow of martini seemed to help. ”I know she wants what’s best for me. And she’s done so much for me. I owe her a lot, I really do. But as far back as I can remember, I’ve been her big sister, you know? I was the one who babysat when our parents were gone and took care of her when she had nightmares and taught her how to put on eyeliner. And now suddenly we seem to have switched places when I wasn’t looking.”

“You feel as though she’s controlling you,” Robert suggested. 

“Yes. No,” said Myfanwy. “She’s not — I mean it’s not like she’s ever forced me to do anything. I don’t think.” There was that letter she’d found in her pocket, the one Bronwyn didn’t know about, the one that made it sound like maybe someone _had_ forced Myfanwy to do something. 

But Myfanwy still didn’t know for sure what that letter meant. And she’d gone out tonight expressly to avoid thinking about it. She took another sip of her drink and yanked her thoughts away. 

“But it’s like she thinks she knows better than me,” she went on. “Like I’m a little kid she has to protect, only she won’t tell me the things that I need to know to understand what she thinks she’s protecting me from. And so it’s like I have to do what she wants, or else something terrible will happen, only I don’t really know what that terrible thing could be.”

“That sounds frustrating,” he said. He was leaning in close now, so close she could feel the warmth of him, and his voice was low. 

Myfanwy laughed breathlessly and looked into her glass. It seemed to have gotten nearly empty while she wasn’t paying attention. “Oh — it’s just sister stuff, you know. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go on like that. Are you close with your siblings?”

“Close enough,” he said. “So what do you plan to do when your holiday is over?”

Myfanwy took in a sharp breath. She’d been trying to avoid thinking about that question too.

“Sorry,” he said, watching her face closely. “Too personal again?”

“No,” she said. “No, you’re fine. It’s just — um. My situation is a little strange.”

She could feel his eyes on her like they were touching her skin, soft and gentle. “Try me,” he said. “I’m used to strange.”

Myfanwy scrubbed her face with her hands, trying to think how to put it. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. So, I’ve been … ill. For a long time. Since I was a teenager. And I’m much better now, and I’m doing really well, and that’s sort of what this whole trip is for. To celebrate me getting better. Only now I’ve also got to work out what I’m going to do next, now I’ve got this whole big empty life ahead of me, and I sort of feel like — well, most people have that figured out by now, haven’t they? But I don’t. I have no idea what comes next.”

“I can see the appeal of that,” he suggested. “If you’re the sort of person who likes options. The world open before you in all directions.”

“And I am,” Myfanwy agreed. “I like to make choices. But I like to have clear options. Like, here’s A and here’s B, here’s red and here’s blue, very defined, very straightforward, a clear decision to make. This is just … a whole blob of possibilities, and I’ve no idea what I want.” She fiddled with the olive from her martini glass. “My sister has lots of ideas,” she added. 

“And do you like any of them?”

Myfanwy shrugged. “She’s an idealist, my sister, and she wants me to be one too. She wants me to become an activist or something like her. But I don’t know if that’s what I want.”

“You strike me as someone with ideals,” he said.

“I think I am. I mean, I like the idea of helping people! I do. But I’d want to do something concrete, something I can actually _touch_.” She put her hand on top of his for emphasis.

“Yes,” he said. His voice sounded abstracted, as though he was talking about something very far away, and his eyes were on her hand on top of his. She could see his lashes now, unfairly long. “Yes, you would.” 

She hadn’t meant it to be flirtatious, had truly just been acting on impulse, but now she’d done it she felt her cheeks heating. Jesus, that cult must have been incredibly strict about touching, all she’d done was put her fingers on the back of a stranger’s hand but she could feel it radiating through her like a kiss, like something electric.

He turned his hand over and laced his fingers through hers, and that electric charge got stronger. She could feel her skin standing up in goosebumps.

Huh. Wait. That wasn’t metaphor electricity she was feeling, it was literal electricity. It was her EVA, dancing along her skin, sending exploratory little tendrils down her spine, making all the hairs on her arms stand up. And now it was drifting down along her right arm, towards where Robert Gestalt was holding her hand, and it was sliding from her skin to his —

— and Myfanwy had an impression of a network, a vast electric network of overwhelming complexity and beauty, and it was split into four branches — 

— and then Robert was snatching his hand away from her like she’d burned him and scrambling to his feet.

Shit. Shit shit shit. This was exactly the kind of thing Bronwyn was always warning her about.

What the fuck kind of EVA was triggered by _hand-holding_?

“Sorry!” Myfanwy said. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to —”

“No,” he said, “no, please don’t apologize, please don’t, you didn’t do anything wrong.” He was breathing hard, tugging at his immaculate jacket sleeves. “I was just taken by surprise, that’s all.” 

Well, sure. Who expects a stranger at the bar to practically electrocute them?

“Mi — Alice,” Robert said. “Alice.” He put a hand on her shoulder, carefully over her sleeve, not touching skin. “You really didn’t do anything wrong.” 

It was funny, he didn’t seem that confused by the electricity. Wasn’t looking at her like she was something inhuman. He seemed more startled than anything else. 

Myfanwy watched his earnest face, his open eyes. It was like he hadn’t expected her to shock him like that, but it didn’t surprise him at all that she could.

“You know,” she breathed, and his eyes widened and lit up, like he was looking at something he was terrified of and something he wanted more than anything in the world, all at the same time. “You know about EVAs,” she said, and his face froze, and then slowly that look dimmed and faded and drifted away.

“I do,” he said gently. “But I promise you, you don’t have anything to fear from me.” 

“All EVAs are in danger,” Myfawny said automatically. Bronwyn had drilled that one into her, too, along with the alias.

“Yes,” he agreed. “All EVAs are in danger, and it’s good you know that.” He paused and then smiled at her, just a little bit wryly, like he was telling a joke and the punchline was on him. “But that means I’m in danger too.” 

It took her a second to get it. He looked so secure there, standing at the bar. He looked safe in a way she hadn’t felt since before she could remember, before the moment two weeks ago that she woke up in the rain and saw her little sister’s eyes in a grown woman’s body. It didn’t seem as though he could possibly feel afraid the way she felt afraid all the time now.

“In danger from what?” she asked, hedging.

“From the same people you are.”

“You mean,” she began.

“Yes.” 

“So you’re —”

“Yes.”

And then he just looked at her, like he was waiting for her to ask anything she wanted to ask, and she felt a flood of questions overwhelming her.

He was an EVA. And she’d never met an EVA before, never met anyone like her before. Or well — she had, but she couldn’t remember it. And it wasn’t like she would have been able to ask questions, anyway, in a place like that. A cult. 

She opened her mouth — and then before she could decide which question to start with her phone was buzzing from her bag. 

“Shit,” she said, pulling it out and switching off the alarm. She’d set it to go off after she’d been gone for an hour, so if Bronwyn woke up and found her missing she wouldn’t have been gone for too long. “I have to go.”

“Someone waiting for you?” said Robert. “I had a friend who used to set an alarm like that when she was sneaking out of the dorms at school, to make sure the matrons wouldn’t catch her.” 

Myfanwy grimaced as she pulled her bag up over her arm. It _was_ a pretty teenaged thing to have to do, sneaking around like that. “I just told my sister I’d be back before too late, that’s all,” she explained. “She worries.” 

“Well, have a good night,” said Robert. “Alice.”

She shivered. He said her alias so deliberately. It made her want to hear what his voice would sound like saying her real name. 

“Look,” she said impulsively, “I’m really glad that I met you.” 

His face had gone blank again, but now it melted back into that open, wanting look. “Me too,” he said. He took her hand, skin on skin, and she swallowed hard, clamping down on her EVA. “Will you still be here tomorrow?”

“I — in Corfu? Yes. We’re staying two more days.” That was how long Bronwyn said it would take for their next safe house to be ready.

“Good,” he said. “Can you meet me here again tomorrow night? There are some things I’d like to discuss with you.” 

She couldn’t risk it. Bronwyn would never sleep so heavily Myfanwy would be able to sneak past her a second night in a row, and if she found out she’d throw an absolute fit. Myfanwy wasn’t supposed to go out at night at all. 

Fuck it. Mum and Dad were dead, so they weren’t telling her what to do, and Myfanwy might not remember much but she could still remember the time Bronwyn thought it would be funny to pee on the neighbor’s poodle when she was four so there was absolutely no way Myfanwy would be taking orders from her. She could go out again tomorrow night and get some answers about EVAs and flirt with a cute boy if she wanted to. 

“Absolutely,” she said. “Tomorrow night.”


	2. Chapter 2

Myfanwy met the second Gestalt the next night at the same bar.

She showed up early, around 10:30. Slipped out as soon as Bronwyn fell asleep, and figured that if Bronwyn woke up early she’d just deal with the inevitable lecture about danger everywhere and the need for clear communication when it came. 

Coming to the bar that early was a little bit desperate as a move, maybe, and he probably wouldn’t even be there yet, but she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it all day: Robert was an EVA, like her. He could tell her what having an EVA really meant.

And he was at the bar when she got there. He just wasn’t alone.

He was sitting at a table this time, looking at a phone, and next to him was a woman with masses of hair the same white blonde as his, looking at a phone on the table in front of her with the same blanked-out expression he had. Huh. Robert’s sister, Myfanwy figured, making her way over to the table. 

It seemed weird that he’d bring his sister. Myfanwy had sort of thought — well, with all the hand holding and the meaningful eye contact, she’d sort of thought that the plans for the evening wouldn’t involve a sibling chaperone. Maybe she’d misinterpreted. Or maybe she’d just gotten here too early and the sister would leave now that she had arrived.

“Hi,” Myfanwy said.

Both of the blond heads in front of her snapped up in unison. 

“You came,” Robert said.

“You must be Alice!” the woman said. She smiled brilliantly. “I’m Eliza.” 

So the sister knew about her. That was interesting.

“It’s so lovely to meet you,” Eliza said.

“Likewise,” Myfanwy said. “I’m sorry, I know I got here a little early, I don’t want to interrupt if you have a family obligation —”

“Now’s perfect,” said Robert instantly. 

“You’re not interrupting anything at all,” Eliza said. “Please sit down.” 

“Okay.” Myfanwy smiled awkwardly and sat at the table. 

Eliza was wearing a pink satin bomber jacket that made Myfanwy instantly hate the plain blue T-shirt she had on. (Bronwyn had insisted that she dress for discretion which in practice seemed to involve a lot of crewnecks, but Myfanwy had noticed that the rules of discretion did not seem to apply to Bronwyn’s highly memorable head full of dreadlocks.) Her blue eyes shaded greener than her brother’s did, but they were watching Myfanwy with just as much intensity as his. 

Silence fell, and then stretched like taffy. 

What was happening? Why was his sister here? Was this an EVA thing? 

Oh god. What if trusting the first random EVA she met was a terrible idea? What if this wasn’t just an EVA thing, but an EVA cult thing? What if the thing about the cult that Bronwyn kept refusing to tell her was that they made you bleach your hair white blonde and then develop amazing fashion sense, and now the Gestalts were trying to recruit her into it and she’d have to break it to them that she knew deep in her bones she could never pull off that pink jacket and so she’d never make it in their EVA fashion cult?

The two Gestalts were watching her expectantly, waiting for her to say something, but she could say nothing at all, and the silence just went on and on and on and on.

“So,” said Robert at last, standing up, “I should get drinks,” and he was gone so quickly that Myfanwy was tempted to accuse him of running.

She looked across the table at Eliza, helpless, and Eliza smiled with a wry twist to her lips. “Have I made things _very_ awkward?” she asked.

She said it with just enough lightness that Myfanwy felt the awkwardness break, and she was able to laugh, to mean it when she said, “No. No, you haven’t really, I was just surprised. I didn’t expect —”

“To be outnumbered?” Eliza quirked an eyebrow. “Sorry. We should have warned you. I just thought two sets of eyes might be an advantage here.”

“An advantage for what?”

“Your EVA.” So Robert definitely had told his sister she was an EVA, then. Great. That was great. Now at minimum two people knew who weren’t supposed to. Bronwyn was going to be so pissed.

“It seemed like you had a few questions about it last night,” Eliza went on, “and we’d like to help you answer them.” 

Myfanwy’s eyes went wide. “Can you?” she asked.

“Why not?” Eliza said. “We know more on the subject than most people. And anyway, it must be terrifying, to be walking around with a power like that without any information about it. I couldn’t leave you here in that situation.” 

Eliza leaned in towards her. Her hair fell forward, framing her face, and her eyes were soft and searching on Myfanwy’s. She let her hand brush Myfanwy’s hand, just for a second, and Myfanwy felt the tingle of her EVA drifting down her spine in response. “Alice,” she said, with exactly the same deliberation Robert had used when he said her alias last night, “things must have been so difficult for you.” 

_Oh shit_ , Myfanwy thought, with blinding clarity, _I’m into girls_.

There was a _clink_ as a martini glass appeared on the table in front of her, and Myfanwy blinked, startled, breaking eye contact with Eliza. “I hope you don’t mind a martini again,” said Robert, taking his place across from her at the table with a whiskey for himself and passing Eliza a — huh, a beer? Seemed offbrand, but okay. “I suppose I should have asked you before I ordered.”

_Oh shit_ , Myfanwy thought, _I’m into the sister of the guy I’m also into_. 

“This is great,” she said out loud. “Thank you.”

Great. Fantastic. Just another fun surprise, courtesy of her lost fifteen years. She was apparently some level of bi, which actually now that she was looking back at some of her girl friends from school did seem to cast things in an interesting light, but also apparently she was some sort of amoral asshole who indiscriminately crushed on siblings. Siblings. What was wrong with her? 

She took a gulp of her drink. The key here was going to be to keep things light and easy. That was the ticket. She just needed to stay away from any intense eye contact or invasion of personal space or personal stories and it would all be fine. “So,” she said, addressing herself towards Robert, “you’ve been telling your sister stories about me.”

She didn’t mean to make it sound like an accusation, but Robert’s face blanked out, and even though Eliza kept smiling, it looked a little strained around the edges. God, this was stressful. “Only good things, I promise,” Eliza said.

“Well,” Myfanwy said, turning towards Eliza and trying to inject a little of the playfulness she’d felt last night back into her voice, “I certainly hope you’re the favorite sibling if you’re the one I get to meet.”

“Hmm. I thought she might be _your_ favorite, actually,” Robert said. 

“People tend to like me,” Eliza explained. ( _Yeah, I bet they do_ , Myfanwy thought, a little wildly.) “And Alex and Teddy can seem abrasive if you’re not used to them.” 

“Alex and Teddy are your other siblings?” Myfanwy asked, trying to keep up.

Eliza waved a hand. “They’re busy tonight. Maybe you’ll meet them later.” She tucked her hair behind her ears in an efficient, business-like gesture. “Now. Tell us about your EVA.”

It didn’t take long for Myfanwy to tell them what she’d put together over the past two weeks. It wasn’t much: her EVA was the weird electric force that flickered under her skin whenever she felt ... strong emotions (Myfanwy blushed at that part and avoided Robert’s eyes, although she noticed that Eliza looked oddly smug), and mostly so far she’d used it to turn the lights repeatedly on and off in various safehouses (hotel rooms, she told the Gestalts) across Europe, because there was fuckall else to do in most of them. 

Also practicing with it was one of the things Myfanwy could do that Bronwyn approved of. She liked that Myfanwy was taking control of her power for herself, she said, instead of letting that cult have control of it for her. Myfanwy liked the idea herself.

“And have you had any trouble deploying at all?” Robert asked. 

Myfanwy thought about it. “Sometimes,” she said. “It has to be strong emotions, right? But I’ve been just lying around different hotel rooms lately, feeling bored and anxious at the same time.”

“Anxious about what?” asked Eliza. 

“Nothing interesting,” Myfanwy said hastily. “The future. What I’m going to do with my life. That sort of thing.” 

“Well,” said Robert, “do you want the thing you choose to do in the future to involve your EVA?”

“I don’t think I want to be an electrician,” Myfanwy said. “And my EVA doesn’t really do much else besides the lights. I mean, it’s not all that exciting, as far as superpowers go.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Eliza.

“Human beings tend to respond quite dramatically to electricity. Have you ever had to use your EVA in self defense?” Robert asked. 

Myfanwy sat very still in her chair. “No,” she said.

It had happened without her really meaning to do it.

“Perhaps even involuntarily,” Eliza suggested. 

“If emotions are the trigger,” Robert went on, “if you were in danger, you might not have meant to use it, but it might have poured out of you without your meaning to do anything. Some EVAs are like that.” 

“I’m not,” Myfanwy said.

She and Bronwyn had been in Rijeka, coming out of a bus station. Eight men wearing latex gloves had attacked and the power had come pouring out of her before she even knew what had happened.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Eliza said, “if you protected yourself. If someone was trying to hurt you, and you stopped them.” 

They were vultures, Bronwyn said. Predators who went after EVAs. Probably they had deserved to die. They would have done worse to her. 

“But I didn’t,” Myfanwy said. “I haven’t done anything like that. I’ve told you and told you. And you need to leave it alone.”

There was a brief and startled silence.

It just wasn’t something liked to think about, that was all. 

Or talk about, really. Certainly not something she wanted to do ever again. And she was working on her power to make sure she wouldn’t.

“Okay,” said Eliza at last. “That’s okay.” 

Her voice was so gentle that the memory of Myfanwy’s voice sounded harsh in her own ears. She felt herself flush red.

“I’m sorry,” Robert said. “We’ve been asking all these questions.” 

“And tonight was supposed to be about you getting answers of your own,” Eliza said.

“I suppose I’m used to being the one asking the questions,” said Robert.

“Force of habit,” said Eliza.

“Professional risk,” said Robert.

“Sorry,” they both said at the same time.

Myfanwy blinked, a little dizzy from watching them switch off like that. Sibling telepathy, she supposed. Maybe that was just what happened if your siblings were the same age as you were, and also you hadn’t spent too many formative years in a cult and/or with amnesia. “It’s fine,” she said, and then repeated the one phrase that had jumped out at her from that performance. “‘Professional risk?’” she said. 

The Gestalts tilted their heads at her in unison, at identical angles. Sibling telepathy apparently extended far, with them. 

“What kind of profession?” Myfanwy asked. “Something where you ask a lot of questions?”

There was a long and blank pause, and then Robert sat back in his chair, chewing on a thumbnail. 

Eliza smiled again, with deliberation this time. “I’m a teacher,” she said firmly. “I’m all the time asking my students questions.”

There was something so confusing about all of this. “You … _both_ are teachers?” Myfanwy asked. 

That pause again. Eliza’s smile was fixed and firm. “Yes,” she said at last. “It’s the family profession. And it makes us all terribly nosey, so you’ll have to forgive us.”

“The family profession?” Myfanwy repeated.

“That’s right,” Eliza said.

“So everyone in your family teaches?” Myfanwy went on. “Your siblings too?”

“As I said,” Eliza said, voice getting tighter, “it’s the family profession.”

Myfanwy could feel her eyebrows going up and up and up on her forehead. “So you’re telling me,” she began, “that the two of you … and also all of your siblings … are all teachers … because that’s what everyone in your family does … and because of that, all four of you hold your conversations like you’re interrogating someone?”

Eliza’s smile evolved on her face, somehow, twisted away from that fixed look into something grudgingly admiring. “Well,” she said, “who’s interrogating who right now?”

Myfanwy cradled her martini in one hand and leaned across the table. “Me,” she said. “I’m interrogating you. Didn’t you just say it was supposed to me asking the questions?”

The two Gestalts both inhaled slowly at the same time. They were looking at her with shining eyes, and both sets of eyes were so blue.

It was funny, they hadn’t made eye contact with each other once the entire time Myfanwy had been sitting there.

“Yes,” they both breathed at once. 

She felt so powerful. She felt like she could do anything and they would let her. She sat back and sipped her drink, considering her next move. 

“Okay,” she said at last. “So. How old were you when you found out about your EVA?”

“I’ve always known,” said Robert.

“Ours became clear when we were very young,” said Eliza. “But that’s unusual. Most people get theirs around puberty, maybe a little later.” 

Myfanwy opened her mouth to say that tracked for her, but then she remembered that she was the one asking the questions. She took a gulp of her drink to cover, and Robert’s lips twitched in what might have been a grin. “Other EVAs,” she said. “I’ve heard some of them get held in these sort of cults. Do you know anything about that?”

“Nothing like that,” said Robert, voice stern.

“Some EVAs join agencies,” said Eliza, “but that’s for their own protection.”

“But I heard the agencies are like cults once you’re in there,” Myfanwy said. “Mental conditioning, isolation, stealing children away from their families, forcing you to live a life of danger and violence, and if you decide you don’t like it once you’re there you can never leave.” 

“There’s a lot of horror stories out there,” Eliza said vaguely. “I wouldn’t set too much store by that.” 

“Well, do you know anyone in one of them?” Myfanwy asked. “Do you know what it’s really like?”

“I’ve heard a few things,” Eliza said. “I’m sure it’s different for everyone. It’s hard to know for sure.”

“But EVAs under the protection of an agency don’t have to worry about vultures,” Robert pointed out. “They can get training that helps them control their powers, and they aren’t persecuted by a society that fears what it can’t understand.”

“Well, is there any kind of EVA … network, or something like that,” Myfanwy asked, “outside the agencies? Somewhere where we can meet other EVAs, and learn from each other, without being committed to an agency?” There was Bronwyn’s resistance movement, but that wasn’t the same thing. The point of the resistance was to keep EVAs isolated away from each other. They were easier to hide that way.

“Not that I’m aware of,” said Robert. 

Myfanwy thought about that. “So the options are to either join an agency and live by their creepy culty rules, or to get kidnapped and sold at auction, or to live your life in hiding without anyone else like you around?” 

“It’s not quite so bad as all that,” said Eliza.

“Isn’t it?” said Myfanwy, and was surprised by how bitter her voice sounded. She scowled at her martini glass, feeling all the power draining out of her. 

The Gestalts were both quiet for a moment. Then Robert said, “You haven’t asked me what mine is. My EVA.” 

Myfanwy looked up at them. For a second she was worried she’d offended them somehow, but neither one of them looked like they were angry with her. “Oh,” she said. “It seemed a little …” Her voice trailed off.

“Personal?” said Eliza.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Robert said. “I’ll tell you, if you answer my question first.” Myfanwy sat up straight, sucking in a breath, but he cut her off. “Not about using your power on another person, you don’t have to say anything about that if you don’t want to. I mean the first thing I asked you.” 

A bemused smile crept its way across Myfanwy’s mouth. “‘Am I happy?’” she quoted. 

He nodded. They were both just sitting there, watching her, like her answer mattered. Like it was somehow vital to them, what she said. 

And then her fucking phone buzzed again. 

Not an alarm this time. Bronwyn. Had to be. No one else had her number.

“Hold on,” she said, and answered the phone. 

“Where are you, where _the fuck_ are you,” Bronwyn said, voice tight with panic. “You can’t run off like this, Myf, you can’t, you don’t understand —”

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m just out,” Myfanwy said quickly, cutting her off. She’d heard this speech more times than she cared to already over the past two weeks. 

“Out _where_?” Bronwyn demanded. “I’m coming to get you.”

Myfanwy heard their mother’s voice like an echo in her head, precise and vivid: “And don’t even _think_ about getting in a car when you’ve been drinking, young lady, I’m coming to get you right now.” 

Mum was gone now. Dad too. It was hard to hold onto that idea. But it was the cult’s fault. Bronwyn had said so.

“There’s no need, Jane,” she said. Bronwyn’s alias was easier for Myfanwy to remember than her own was. In Myfanwy’s head, Bronwyn was still playing with fairy wings, and this tense, unhappy woman seemed like a stranger in so many ways. She could be a Jane, why not? “I’m on my way back right now.” 

“Be back in five minutes, or I start tracking your phone,” Bronwyn threatened, and hung up. 

Myfanwy sighed down at the innocent-looking phone in her hand. All this surveillance. Bronwyn meant well, and she was only being protective, but it could be overwhelming. “I’ve got to go,” she said aloud.

“So we heard,” said Eliza.

“We’ll be here tomorrow,” Robert said. “Same time, same place.”

Myfanwy just had time to glance behind her and smile once before she was out the door.


	3. Chapter 3

Myfanwy met the third and fourth Gestalts on the third night at the bar. 

After what had happened the night before, with Eliza, she was half expecting them this time when she showed up (absurdly early, at 7, having left while Bronwyn was in the loo, and after this Myfanwy fully anticipated Bronwyn adopting a no-closed-doors-ever policy in their next safehouse). And as she walked towards the bar she could see them through the window: there they were, four of them, all sitting at the same table. 

Robert was in a T-shirt that looked so much nicer than Myfanwy’s that she suspected it was designer, Eliza was in something black and tailored, and next to them were two men with that same distinctive white blond hair: the mysteriously abrasive Alex and Teddy. One of them wore his hair gelled severely back, and he had buttoned himself into a suit just as severe. The other one wore his hair curly and falling into his eyes, and he had on a tracksuit.

A tracksuit at that table of style plates. _The EVA fashion cult can’t get everyone_ , Myfanwy thought smugly, but then he shifted and she realized the tracksuit was tailored. The EVA fashion cult was merciless.

They were all staring at their phones in dead silence, looking away from the entrance with a determination that felt pointed. But when she opened the door Tracksuit glanced over at the motion, as though he couldn’t help it, and as soon as he saw her his entire face lit up, like he was a puppy and she was about to throw him the world’s best Frisbee. 

The other three Gestalts looked up in unison — sibling telepathy again, it must be — while Myfanwy was still trying to catch her breath from the force of that smile. Robert called, “Alice,” and Myfanwy walked over to the table.

Tracksuit was trying to get his face under control, she could tell, but he wasn’t as good at it as the rest of them; he kept sneaking glances at her under his lashes with a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Mafia Suit was stone-faced in comparison, but despite the severity of his clothes his eyes were soft as he looked up at her. They were identical twins, Myfanwy realized, and both of them had eyes even bluer than their siblings did.

“I didn’t think you’d be here so early,” said Robert. 

“Neither did I,” Myfanwy said. “What were you planning to do, camp out here all night?” 

“Maybe,” said Eliza, and her voice was teasing but Myfanwy looked over at Tracksuit’s face again and wasn’t sure that they were joking.

It was kind of weird that he was so excited to see her, right? He’d never actually met her before. The same way it was kind of weird that Robert kept flirting with her and then bringing all his siblings along to chaperone every time they met. She should have been weirded out by the whole thing so much more than she actually was. 

“Hi,” Myfanwy said, sitting down in the empty chair between Robert and Mafia Suit. “I’m Alice.” 

“Alex,” said Tracksuit.

“Teddy,” said Mafia Suit. 

The vowel sounds were different in their voices than they were when Robert and Eliza said them — a little rougher, a little more northern. Myfanwy let it pass without comment for the time being. “And now I’ve met all of you,” she said, “are you going to introduce me to your gran or is cult indoctrination the next step?”

“The plan was both,” said Robert.

“Granny’s the charismatic cult leader,” Eliza explained.

“Well, she was,” said Alex. “But Zorak the Magnificent called her and she transcended this realm and passed on to the next.”

“Never even had a chance to pass on her kool aid recipe,” said Teddy gravely.

Myfanwy felt her lips twitching as she looked between the four of them. “You’re a family of freaks, aren’t you?”

“It’s often been said,” said Robert. 

Myfanwy shrugged. “Well, at least you keep me supplied in alcohol. Although ...” she raised her eyebrows pointedly at the empty table in front of her. “I still don’t have a drink.” 

“I’ll get it,” Eliza said at once.

“I knew you were only using us for the drinks,” Alex said while Eliza walked to the bar. 

“You’ve known me five seconds and you see through me and my fiendish master plan right away,” Myfanwy said. “Of course I’m only using you all for the drinks.” She turned so she could look up and down at the other twin’s severe suit. “So, Teddy. How do you like being a schoolteacher?”

He made his face blank, but she was starting to be able to read the nuances of the Gestalt blankness and she was pretty sure this version was ironic. “It’s my life’s work,” he said. 

Myfanwy nodded. “I can tell just by looking that you’re the kind of person who loves children.” 

“Overwhelmingly,” he said. 

She turned back to Alex. “You too, of course.”

“Oh, love kids, me,” he said, eyes laughing down at her. The twins were taller and broader than Robert and Eliza were, so even though he was slouching his eyeline was above hers. “Can’t get enough.”

Myfanwy shook her head reproachfully at Robert. “And here you told me your brothers were abrasive, when anyone can see that they’re puppies.”

“Careful,” said Robert. He was leaning back in his chair, watching her with a look of lazy enjoyment on his face. “Teddy’s bitten people for less.”

Myfanwy opened her mouth to respond without thinking, but then she saw Eliza walking back from the bar with a wine glass and was startled enough to catch herself and shut her mouth firmly.

“I thought you might like a change,” Eliza said, putting a glass of red wine in front of her. “I hope it’s all right.”

“Sure,” said Myfanwy automatically, because her mind was still half a step back, realizing with mounting horror that before Eliza interrupted her, she’d been about to say, “Biting could be fun.” What was wrong with her? They were _siblings_. 

“Wine’s fine,” she said out loud. “As long as it’s not kool-aid.” Then she looked at the glass and frowned. Wine was one of those things she still didn’t know if she liked. And she’d told them that already before, they should have remembered — 

No she hadn’t. She had told Robert that she didn’t like wine, not Eliza. And Robert might have been giving his siblings weirdly detailed reports of their conversations but obviously he hadn’t told Eliza about her drink preferences. It was an honest mistake. She didn’t know why she’d expected them all to know what she’d told one of them. 

She tried a sip, shrugging mentally. The wine was fine. It tasted heavier than the martini, maybe a little earthier, but she wasn’t going to humiliate herself and spit it out. “Thanks,” she said belatedly. 

“Of course,” said Eliza. She was watching Myfanwy drink her wine with a little more focus than was maybe warranted, but on the other hand intense focus did seem to be part of the whole Gestalt sibling _thing_. 

“So if you’re all siblings,” Myfanwy said, to move the conversation away from her drinking habits and into the safer arena of small talk, “how do you have different accents?”

The blank look they were all giving her this time was the stonewall blank stare, the one Robert had given her when she asked him what he was doing in town, that Eliza had been wearing right before she’d said they were all teachers. It was the look they used when they were trying to figure out what to say next. 

They weren’t telling her their whole story, obviously. But that was fine. She wasn’t telling them hers either.

“Did you grow up in different parts of the country?” she suggested, to give them something to start with. “Parents divorced?”

“No,” said Eliza at once. “We all grew up together.”

“It was something we picked up at school,” Alex said, in a voice like it was a suggestion. “We were part of … different groups.”

“Those two were always meant to run with a posher crowd than we were,” Teddy said, more firmly.

“But you must be pretty close now,” Myfanwy said. “All going off on holiday together.”

“We get on,” Robert said vaguely.

“So you’ve got some questions about EVAs,” Teddy said, spreading his hands out on the table in front of him.

“Yes,” Myfanwy said, letting him change the subject and watching his hands covertly. They were large and … not unpleasant, as hands went. “Yeah, I do.” She cleared her throat and then sat up straight, turning back to Robert. “Actually, you were going to give me some answers, weren’t you? Right before I left last night. You were going to tell me what your EVA was.” She left out the other half of the deal he had floated at her last night on purpose, just to see if he’d let her or if he’d call her on it, and his mouth quirked into a half smile. 

“I think maybe you already know,” he said. “You have an idea of it, anyway. Don’t you?”

There were in fact a few half-formed notions floating around in the back of Myfanwy’s mind, notions involving sibling telepathy and four people with the same job and the same intense control freak vibes, but they weren’t coherent enough for her to look at them straight on yet. Anyway just the thought of it was too weird. “No,” she said. “I haven’t got any idea at all.”

“I think you do, though,” Eliza put in. “You started to get an inkling when Eliza showed up —”

“You’re talking about yourself in the third person now?” Myfanwy interjected.

“— and then when the twins got here you put it together,” Teddy said, finishing Eliza’s sentence for her.

“I usually do a better job of covering it up,” Alex said, sounding a little apologetic. “I’ve been distracted.” 

Myfanwy tossed her hair and threw her brightest smile around the table, triumphant. “Have I been distracting you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” they all said at once, and she laughed. 

Then she realized that she’d been letting herself flirt with all of them, and her conscious mind caught up to the implications of what they’d been saying, and she sobered abruptly. “I don’t — no,” she said. “No, that doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” said Robert. 

“Here,” said Eliza. “Let’s try something. Will you come with me?” She stood up, pushing back her chair and watching Myfanwy expectantly, and in a daze Myfanwy pushed back her own chair and followed Eliza into the corner of the bar, out of view of the rest of the table.

Eliza held her forearms out to Myfanwy, palms up. “Touch me,” she said, “and then see if one of the others can tell you where you touched me.” 

Myfanwy said nothing, held her breath. The undersides of Eliza’s wrists looked so pale, so tender. 

After a moment the expectant look in Eliza’s eyes dimmed and she brought her arms down. “You don’t have to,” she said. “If it’s too strange, I mean it’s fine if you —”

“Hold still,” Myfanwy said. “And close your eyes.”

Eliza shut her eyes, and then before Myfanwy could let herself think about it too much she leaned in and kissed her. Eliza made a soft surprised sound, and then she brought up her arms around Myfanwy’s neck and kissed her back.

And there it was again, the electricity Myfanwy had felt that first night, touching Robert in the bar. It wound its way down her spine and radiated through her bones, to her lips against Eliza’s, to her hands on Eliza’s jaw. As it met Eliza’s skin Myfanwy saw that electric network again, vast and overwhelming, with four branches, and she knew without even having to think about it that one of the branches was Eliza, and one was Robert, and one was Teddy and one was Alex, and all of them were part of the same system. 

The same person.

She let the kiss end and drew back. “Is this okay?” she said. “I mean — is this okay?”

Eliza’s eyes were bright and she — they — were looking at Myfanwy as though they couldn’t quite take in what they were seeing. “Come here,” they said, taking her hands and pulling her back, and they kissed her again, harder this time.

She shuddered and threaded her hands through their hair, feeling lost. They kissed her like they knew her, like she was more to them than a glorified stranger. This hadn’t been meant to get so intense so fast. 

“I don’t even know what to call you,” Myfanwy whispered, pulling back, her mouth still so close to theirs. She could feel Eliza’s breath on her lips.

“Anything,” they said. “You can call me anything.” 

“Gestalt,” Myfanwy said, and they made a broken sound in the back of their throat and kissed her fast and desperate. 

Her mind was swimming. The electricity was all around her now, not just running along her spine but through her whole body, dancing just below her skin. They were crammed into a dingy little corner of this crowded tourist bar, Gestalt leaning back against the wall and arching up towards Myfanwy, and Myfanwy pushed forward, crowding into their space, and felt their hands tighten around her waist. 

Then they broke the kiss, pulling back, pushing their forehead against hers. “Fuck, Myf, watch the lights,” they said. 

Myfanwy shook her head. Her thoughts felt heavy, as though she’d been drinking glass after glass of wine, but she’d only had a sip. “What?”

Gestalt jerked their chin up, and Myfanwy followed their gaze and flinched. The lighting fixture over their heads was flashing dangerously. 

“Oh _shit_ ,” she said. Gestalt fell into breathless laughter, like they couldn’t help it, and she followed. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I can fix it,” she said, and took in a deep breath, trying to force her EVA down by sheer force of will.

The light flickered, and then it steadied. 

“Nice to know I can distract you, too,” Gestalt murmured in her ear, and the flickering intensified. They looked delighted. 

“Stop it,” Myfanwy said, stepping back away from them.

Gestalt’s face fell. “I was only teasing,” they protested. 

“Yeah, well, now you pay the price,” Myfanwy told them, smiling so they’d know she was joking. But there was something niggling in the back of her mind, something they’d said that — somehow hadn’t been quite right. But what could it possibly have been? She focused on the lights again, breathing deep and slow, and the flickering stopped.

“Well done,” Gestalt said, looking sincerely impressed. 

They were so weird sometimes. It was just a light fixture.

“We should go back to the table,” Myfanwy said. “I want to see if the rest of you can guess where I touched you.” 

“I think you know the answer to that already.” Gestalt took her hands again and took a deep breath, like they were steeling themselves. “Listen, there’s something I think I should tell you.”

“Well, but can they guess where I’m going to touch you?” What would that even be like, with someone who had four bodies? Would they … take turns? Was she about to walk into some kind of orgy situation? Might as well learn by doing, she reasoned. 

Gestalt laughed again, a little frantic, and pulled at her hands. “No but seriously, Alice, I think you should know this before we go any further —”

Myfanwy froze. That was it. That was the thing that wasn’t quite right. 

“What did you call me?” she said. 

They cut themselves off, tilting their head at her, blue eyes limpid. “I called you Alice,” they said. “Why? Did you want me to call you something else?” There was something hopeful in the way they were asking, which didn’t make sense.

“No,” Myfanwy said. “Before that. Just a minute ago. You said — you said, ‘ _Myf_ , watch the lights.” 

They pulled themselves up straight, still holding onto her hands. Their face was blank again. Were they about to try to stonewall her? Because they had some nerve, if they thought they could explain away — “You didn’t say Alice,” she said, just to be clear. “You called me by another name.”

They took a second to think about that. Then: “Yes,” they said. They were standing slightly too still in that way they had, to go with their too-blank face. “I called you Myf. Short for Myfanwy.”

Not stonewalling, then.

She yanked her hands away from them and they let her. Still completely composed. Not giving anything away. 

But they’d already given everything away. They had to know that, didn’t they?

“I was just about to tell you,” they said. “I honestly was.”

“You know who I am,” she said. 

“Yes.” 

“You’ve been lying to me this whole time.”

“I didn’t like doing that.”

“But you did it. And you — did you just _happen_ to run into me that first night? Are you going to try to tell me that this is all just some massive coincidence?”

“No. I was looking for you. I have been looking for you. I’ve been tracking you for the past two weeks. But Myfanwy, I wasn’t —”

Whatever they thought they could say to make the first part of that speech sound better to her, she didn’t want to hear it. She turned on her heel and pushed her way into the crowd, right into the crush of bodies all around them, and let the bodies form a barrier that would keep Gestalt back. Then she rode her wave of outrage right through the door and pointed herself towards Bronwyn and safety.

They’d been tracking her. Did that mean they knew where the safehouse was? Everything could be compromised. Fuck, all those warnings Bronwyn had given her and she’d completely blown them off, let her guard down almost entirely, and for what? Because she’d got her head turned by a pretty set of blue eyes. By _four_ pretty sets of blue eyes, whatever. Bronwyn was right to keep treating her like she was a teenager; she’d been acting like one. 

The way they’d played her. Letting her think she was the one with the power in that situation. And she’d eaten it all up. Pathetic. 

She was far enough away now from the noise of the bar that she could hear footsteps behind her, heavy and purposeful. “Myfanwy,” a voice said.

Too rough to be Robert or Eliza. One of the twins, then, she wasn’t sure which one. Not that it mattered either way, did it? They were all Gestalt. Which meant they had all lied to her. She kept walking. 

“You left your bag,” Gestalt said.

Fuck. The key to the safehouse was in her bag. She stopped walking and turned around.

Alex was standing there in their ridiculous tailored track suit, holding her ugly Bronwyn-approved canvas bag out to her. She snatched it away.

“You’re from that place,” she said. “The Chequy. Aren’t you.” 

They spread their empty hands. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.” 

“So you stalked me?”

“Myf, you _disappeared_. Your _memory_ was _erased_. I couldn’t find any other way to —”

“And then when you actually started talking to me, you _lied_ to me, you let me think — you made me think —”

“That was an accident, I never meant to let it get that far, I shouldn’t have, I just wanted —”

“What, to fuck with my head? Because you people haven’t done enough to me?” Their face was collapsing right in front of her, melting into something like panic. They must have chosen to send this particular body after her, the one that couldn’t blank their face out, must have wanted her to see how they were feeling for some reason. She kept going. “Your agency fucked me up until I willingly erased my own memory and then you thought I’d want to be in contact with you ever again?”

“I thought —” they were stammering now, at a loss for words. “I thought maybe —”

“You thought maybe you could drag me back to your weird little cult?” EVA fashion cult, her mind interjected unhelpfully. “Reprogram me?”

“I thought maybe you weren’t actually willing,” they said. “To wipe your memory. I thought it might not have been your choice.”

_If you’re reading these words and don’t remember writing them, then I’m afraid it’s already too late._

She stood stock still for a second. Then she said, “Of course it was my choice.”

“Do you remember?” they asked. “Do you remember making that decision?”

“Alice,” said a voice, hard and furious, and Myfanwy turned and saw Bronwyn bearing down on them, half a block away still but moving fast. She turned back to Gestalt.

“Bronwyn’s my _sister_ ,” she said. “She told me exactly what happened, and I don’t have to remember, because I know what she said —”

“I have the footage,” they said. “The CCTV footage of the memory wipe. If you want it, it’s yours.” 

Myfanwy sucked in a breath. Too much, too much was happening all at once, she didn’t know what to do. 

And then Gestalt’s mouth quirked into a smile, sad and tentative, and Alex’s face was different but somehow it was exactly the same way Eliza had smiled the night before when they’d said, “Have I made things very awkward?”

“Call me when you decide,” was what they said now, and then they turned and walked away, and Bronwyn was pelting up to Myfanwy and grabbing her shoulders.

“Are you okay?” Bronwyn said over and over again: “Are you okay? My — Alice, Alice, are you okay, did they say anything to you, did they do anything, are you okay? Are you okay, are you okay, are you okay?”


	4. Chapter 4

The fourth time Myfanwy remembered meeting Gestalt was in Istanbul, and they only brought Teddy. 

When she walked into the pristine hotel bar where they’d told her to meet them they were sitting there, ramrod straight. There was an expensive looking whiskey lying untouched in front of them as they drummed their fingers against the table in their expensive looking too-severe suit. 

The body she’d spent the least time with. That was probably intentional on their part, but she didn’t know what their intention was. To make her feel less betrayed, since she didn’t remember talking that much to Teddy, so she wouldn’t feel like that body in particular had lied to her? Or was it to throw her off her balance? Gestalt had said that people usually found Teddy and Alex abrasive, and this body certainly seemed more threatening than the other three. They must be the same size as Alex, but they carried themselves like they were bigger. 

Either way it wouldn’t work. Myfanwy did feel betrayed, and she wasn’t about to let her guard down. But she also wasn’t about to be intimidated by someone who went by Teddy. Didn’t she have control over her EVA now? Hadn’t she already used it to defend herself before?

And anyway, she noted with vindication, that severe suit didn’t even suit this body all that well. It swallowed up their jawline. 

They didn’t pretend not to be watching for her this time, and their expression didn’t change when she walked in. She had the feeling they’d seen her coming through a different set of eyes, like maybe they’d been watching her through the hotel’s security cameras as soon as she set foot in the place.

“The Gestalt are the Chequy’s eyes and ears,” Bronwyn had said, after that night she found Myfanwy with them. “They’re plugged into all the surveillance networks the Chequy has. Them coming after you was the Chequy sending out the big guns to bring you back.”

They’d left their number in her phone. Just one number, but she supposed it didn’t matter much which phone it went to. They must have programmed it in when she’d left her bag behind at the table. Hadn’t had any trouble at all getting past her security code. It was the kind of thing a spy would have done. 

“Of course you trusted them,” Bronwyn had said. “It’s their job to get people to trust them. They’re _spies_ , Myf.”

She sat down across from them at one of the hotel bar’s delicate little tables and folded her hands in her lap. “Where’s the rest of you?” she asked. 

“On security,” they said, which meant she was right about the cameras, probably, “making sure we don’t get interrupted.” 

Myfanwy’s hackles rose. “If you’re planning to do anything to Bronwyn —”

Their eyebrows went up. “I meant vultures,” they said. “Istanbul’s a hub for them, so we have to be particularly careful.”

“Oh,” Myfanwy said.

“I was surprised your sister decided to stop here,” they added. “But I’m not planning to do anything to her.”

“Oh,” Myfanwy said again.

“Although she has certainly made a habit of interrupting our last few meetings,” they said. “And if you decide you’d rather she not come to this one, hotel security would be more than happy to have her wait outside.” They paused, and when Myfanwy didn’t say anything, they elaborated, “It’s your choice,” with the finest of emphasis on the word choice.

Bronwyn wasn’t coming. Myfanwy had told her not to follow, when she left this morning. Had said, “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but there are some things I need to sort out for myself.” Bronwyn’s face had gone dead white, and she had cried.

But Gestalt didn’t need to know that.

“Well, that depends,” Myfanwy said now.

She saw their eyes flicker up and down, like they were taking her in, but their face was like granite: gave absolutely nothing away. 

Possibly they’d noticed for the first time that her clothes had changed. When she left Bronwyn’s safehouse this morning she’d taken money with her, the whole parcel of banknotes that had been stuffed in the pockets of the rain-drenched trench coat she’d woken up in, the parcel she’d hidden away in the bottom of her bag where Bronwyn wouldn’t look. On her way to the hotel bar she’d peeled off a couple notes, exchanged them at what was probably a usurious rate, and used them to buy an outfit Bronwyn would have probably considered insufficiently inconspicuous: leather jacket, simple white vest, jeans a little less mumsyish than the pair Bron had been dressing her in. 

It was frivolous, maybe, to care about what she was wearing at a time like this, but it helped her feel less afraid. She felt right in them, felt sleek and dangerous, like a weapon. Not like someone who was turning her back on the only person she had left in the world just by being there, at that table. 

“Depends on what?” they asked her.

“What have you got for me?” she asked. 

The first thing they had for her was a tablet with the video footage of the memory wipe on it. It was more unnerving than she had expected. 

It was only CCTV footage, grainy and silent and at a strange angle, but it was clear enough that she could make out what she was seeing: Herself, in that garage she remembered waking up outside of, doing things that she didn’t remember doing. 

Walking in with Bronwyn’s friend Marcus. Seeing Bronwyn, hugging her. And then seeing that boy Naveen — and how was he doing, anyway, she should ask Bronwyn about him — and turning to Bronwyn in confusion. And then starting to cry.

Myfanwy sat very still on her delicate little chair and watched herself on the video screen pull out her phone and call someone. Her video-self was crying so hard that her shoulders were shaking visibly; she could see them jerking up and down under that heavy ugly trench coat. She was shaking her head and putting down the phone, and then Bronwyn gestured to Naveen, and he stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder, and she froze — and then the video stopped.

“Footage cuts out there,” Gestalt remarked tonelessly. “Best we can tell your EVA blew out the cameras and the lights and everything else, too, under the stress of the memory wipe.” 

“Of course, the Chequy got them very young,” Bronwyn had said that last night in Corfu. “It’s a shame, but it would be nearly impossible to deprogram them at this point. Here, have a look at this.” And then she’d shown Myfanwy a video of four little kids with white blond hair, all a little feral around the eyes, chewing on their thumbnails in unison while an excited voice said, “This is the quadruplet hive mind.”

In the hotel bar, Gestalt deposited an envelope on the table in front of her, in the same thick, creamy stationary as the letter she’d found in her pocket. “I found this in your desk the next day.”

_Dear you_ , the letter began: _if you’re reading this, you’ve found your way back to your desk …_

According to the letter, she had thought someone at the Chequy was going to attack her. That tracked with Bronwyn’s story, more or less. Probably the Chequy attacked its own workers all the time, and she had good reason to be wary.

It was funny, though, the letter. She’d expected herself to come back to her job. She’d planned for it. She said she felt loyalty towards it, and towards the people who worked with her.

Well, she’d been brainwashed. And that, Myfanwy reminded herself, was part of why she’d chosen the memory wipe: so Bronwyn wouldn’t have to reprogram her, which even her past self had recognized would have been necessary. 

Only it didn’t look on the video exactly as though she’d chosen it. It looked … a little violent.

“Far as we can tell,” Gestalt continued, in that flat, toneless voice, “you found out about the memory wipe a month in advance from a psychic you brought into the office for evaluation. You were preparing for it. You had a room full of files and photos and videos in your flat.” 

What an odd thing, it hadn’t even occurred to her that she would have had a flat, but of course she had. And she had no idea what it looked like. 

“You didn’t want it to happen,” they continued. “You always referred to it in your papers as an attack. You spent that month in a panic about it. Then your sister showed up and sprang the idea on you, and before you even had time to tell her what you thought, she had the boy working on you while your back was turned.”

Myfanwy breathed in slowly. “You can’t tell what I’m saying on that video,” she said. “Maybe I told her to go ahead.” 

“Maybe you did,” Gestalt said. “Does it look from that footage like you had the time you needed to make a decision as big as that? Wiping out half your life, gone forever without a trace — do you think that what you said after two minutes of consideration, when you spent the past month convinced that someone you trusted was going to attack you at any moment — do you think that if you said yes right then and there, that meant yes? Or did it mean maybe let’s fucking wait and think about this first?” 

Their voice had gone warm with anger, and their hands were curled into fists on the tabletop. There were bruises across the knuckles. She thought about Robert’s immaculate hands, and about how in that video Bronwyn had shown her, they had help up those signs, _BE YOUR BEST SELF_ , and she could see why Gestalt had kept Teddy away from her when they were trying to charm her. There were parts of themselves they had optimized for certain kinds of public consumption, and this wasn’t one of them. 

“Who am I talking to?” she asked. “On the video, when I make that call. Who am I talking to?”

They uncurled their hands. It looked like it took effort, like they were trying to force themselves down from their anger. “Farrier,” they said. “Linda. The former King.”

“King?”

A tiny flinch. They were expecting her to know this sort of thing, and it hurt them that she didn’t. “She’s the highest officer in the Chequy. Was. She was fired for what she did to you.”

Myfanwy touched the creamy stationary of the letter. _The person who hurt you — betrayed you — is right here_. “And what did she do?”

Teddy’s hands tightened reflexively back up. “She’s the one who told Bronwyn she’d trade you for the boy. You called her right before the wipe and asked her what to do, and she told you to take it.”

She took a moment for that one. Then, “ _Trade_ ,” said Myfanwy. “Bronwyn _traded_ for me. With Naveen’s life.”

“And Linda went along with it,” Gestalt said. “Proper fucking vulture deal, right at the top level of the Chequy.” 

Myfanwy stared at the letter without seeing it and wished for a drink. This was a bar, after all, she should have some alcohol in front of her. “That is fucked up,” she said out loud. 

“But listen, Linda’s gone now,” they said, urgently. “She’s awaiting trial. Grantchester’s in charge now — Conrad — and he’s — well, he’s not perfect but he’s not likely to engage in vulture trade.” 

“And he sent you after me,” Myfanwy said. “To bring me back to that place. After I was traded away from it.”

They went blank for a long, long moment. She’d thought she was starting to be able to read their blanknesses but this one she couldn’t get a handle on. What were they _thinking_ when they looked like that? “My orders were to determine your status,” they said at last. “See how much you remembered about the Chequy, whether you posed any kind of security risk.”

“I don’t remember anything —” Myfanwy started, but they continued on over her.

“But that’s not what I was doing. I — Myf —” the blankness on their face cracked open; they looked wrecked — “I just wanted to know if you were happy.” 

_You still haven’t told me_ , Robert had said. 

Myfanwy knew what Bronwyn would want her to to do say. She would want her to say, “I am happy, and I don’t remember anything, and you should stay away from me,” and go straight back to the safehouse where Bronwyn was waiting for her. 

What she said instead was: “And have you figured it out yet?”

They broke her gaze, looking down at the table. Brought one of their hands up to their mouth to chew on their thumbnail.

“Bad habit,” Myfanwy said, reflexively, and reached out to knock their hand away.

Before she could blink they’d twisted their hand, and then they were holding her by the wrist, not hard, but firmly, their thumb on her pulse point. 

Myfanwy felt the color in her cheeks heighten. She pressed back hard against her EVA.

“Happier than you were, yeah. You’re happier than I’ve seen you in — years, maybe. Since we were kids. You’ve been through shit, Myfany, I don’t want to pretend you haven’t, and there are things you’re maybe better off forgetting. But I think,” they said slowly, thumb rubbing against the inside of her wrist, “that if you were really happy — properly happy, I mean, not just happier than you were before — then you wouldn’t have been so willing to talk to me.” 

Myfanwy thought about that. Then she pulled her wrist out of their hand, grabbed their glass of scotch, and took a drink. “Oh,” she said in pleased surprise. “I do like scotch.” 

That surprised a laugh out of them, with teeth showing and eyes crinkling around the edges. For a second Teddy looked like Alex. “Yeah,” they said. “But you mostly do wine unless you mean business.” The smile died abruptly. “Or — you did.” 

Myfanwy took another drink of their scotch. “What were we to each other?” she asked. She wanted to toss it off like the question didn’t mean anything to her at all, but she couldn’t help flicking her eyes back up to them as she asked. 

They shrugged. “We’re friends,” they said. “We’ve known each other since we were sixteen. We went to school together. I taught you to use a gun, and you taught me to put on mascara and play football. You’re my best friend, Myfanwy.” 

“I don’t usually flirt with my best friends the way you keep flirting with me,” she pointed out.

“How the fuck would you know?” Gestalt returned. 

Myfanwy waited, sipping the scotch, and at last they sighed and said, “I don’t know. I thought — there was a night, and I thought maybe we were — going to be more.”

“But then?” Myfanwy prompted.

They gestured to the pile they’d built in front of her, of the letter and the tablet. 

“Oh,” she said, and the word fell into a silence that seemed to deaden the gentle clinking and clacking from the rest of the bar all around them, until the space of their table was as quiet as a snowfall. 

“You knew it was the last night you’d remember,” they said suddenly. “It was the last night of the month the psychic gave you, and that’s what you did with it. I still don’t know why you did that.” 

Myfanwy wanted to cry, suddenly, and she hadn’t before. 

“I don’t know why you kissed me in Corfu, either,” they added.

That one she wasn’t going to get into, not right now. She turned her attention back to the letter, to the video on the tablet. _The loyalty I feel to this agency, the good work I believe we do in the world …_

“What exactly is your plan,” she asked slowly, “if I tell you that I have no intention of ever going back the the Chequy?”

“To tell you that I don’t think that’s a good idea,” they said somberly. “You don’t know how dangerous it is out there, Myf, and the Chequy has the resources to protect you —”

“I can take care of myself,” Myfanwy said.

“You got lucky with a pack of vultures who weren’t expecting you to be able to use your power like that,” Gestalt said. “But they’ll be prepared next time, and Myfanwy, if I can find you so can they.”

Myfanwy flinched. Behind her eyes she saw limp arms ending in dirty latex-gloved hands. “You know about Rijeka?” she asked, mouth dry. 

“That’s how I found your trail,” they said. “You need to learn to clean up after yourself better than that, if you plan to keep running.”

“I don’t plan to go on killing people,” Myfanwy flashed out.

“Yeah well, if you’re going to live your life on the run I suggest you get comfortable with that idea, because it’s unlikely you’ll have a choice,” Gestalt said ruthlessly. “Someone with the abilities you have is worth a lot of money on the black market, and without the protection of an agency backing you up they’ll think of you as an easy target. You will be attacked again, and you will be attacked frequently, and those encounters will end either with you on the auction block or you taking a life again, so you’d better decide quickly which of those two fates you’d prefer.” 

“And if I tell you I want to go back to the Chequy?” Myfanwy said. “What then? I get to use my powers to kill people just the same, don’t I, except this time I’m doing it for other people instead of just to protect myself.”

“You’re not a field agent, you’re a _beaurocrat_ ,” they said. “You work in _support_. You oversee budgeting and things like that. You mostly use your power to de-lint your sweaters.”

Myfanwy paused. She had to admit that when Bronwyn had told her that the EVA cult was also a spy organization she’d been picturing herself doing something a little bit more glamorous than paperwork. Still: “And what was I doing budgeting for, exactly?” she said. “Was I budgeting for _other_ people to violently attack and kill vultures without a trial? Was I working out how many pounds it costs to rip screaming children out of their beds? The exact cost of cult garments for — for ceremonial sacrifices?”

“Ceremonial — Jesus Christ, what the fuck has your sister been telling you?” They snatched the scotch glass back out of her hands and downed what was left all in one go, signalling the waiter for another before they’d put the glass back down. (“Two please,” Myfanwy put in.)

“I don’t know what you think goes on at the Chequy,” they said, “but I’ve been there my entire life, and I promise you, there are no child sacrifices.”

Myfanwy rolled her eyes. “I know that, okay, the cult thing was a metaphor, I get that.”

“ _Cult_ thing,” they said.

“But there _are_ vultures killed without trial,” she said. “And there are children pulled out of their beds.” She paused, licked her dry lips. “I mean. Isn’t that what happened to us?”

A long pause. Myfanwy waited for them to say something, and in the time it took for the waiter to deposit two glasses of scotch on the table in front of them and then walked away again, they said not a single word.

Myfanwy picked up her glass, took a sip, and waited some more. 

Finally they said, “Your parents were unable to care for someone with an EVA like yours. So the Chequy stepped in when it had to.” 

That was a lie about her parents, if Bronwyn had been telling the truth. But Gestalt probably didn’t know that: presumably that would have been what the Chequy told Myfanwy when she was sixteen, to keep her from going after her parents. Gestalt probably thought that it was the truth.

“And my parents sold me to vultures when I was a child,” they continued, “because they didn’t know what else to do with me. The Chequy rescued me. They brought me up.” 

Oh god.

Was that a lie, too? But who could make up something like that? 

On the other hand, who could sell their own child like that? 

The kids in that video Bronwyn had shown her couldn’t possibly have been older than six at most. 

Myfanwy swallowed her drink and tried hard not to look as though she was pitying them. She knew with bone-deep certainty that they would hate more than anything to see her pitying them.

“And if you think I’d rather they hadn’t fucking _bothered_ ,” they added, “that the Chequy had just let me there in a vulture cage, instead of pulling me out and giving me a life of my own —”

“But did they give you your own life?” Myfanwy asked. “Or did they take it for themselves? Could you leave if you wanted to?”

“Where would I go?” they asked. “Anyway I don’t want to leave. I like my job. I’m very good at it. I like helping other EVAs and I like taking down vultures.” 

“Okay,” Myfanwy said. “What about me? What if after this whole conversation is over, I decide that I’m all right living my life on the run no matter what you say, and there’s absolutely no way I’m going back to the Chequy? What happens then?”

Teddy’s hands fidgeted up towards their jaw, and then they glared down at their fingers and folded their hands back down on the table. “If that was what you really wanted,” they said slowly, “then I would go back to Grantchester. I would tell him that you had no memory of the Chequy and posed no security risk, and that our best move would be to let you live your life on your own. Far away from us. And he would agree with my professional judgment and that would be that. If you wanted.” 

“And all it took,” Myfanwy said, “was for me to have half my life erased out of my head.” She clinked her glass against theirs. “Cheers.”

They looked so miserable, watching her drink. And almost absurd, they were so big and bulky, perched carefully on the edge of that delicate little chair. Why on earth had they chosen this bar? They should have asked her to meet them someplace more to scale for this body. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” they said. “What Farrier did to you, it was wrong. There is protocol for people who want to retire; you get sent to a different wing of the agency, spend your time away from operations —”

“But you’d always know,” Myfanwy said, “that the point of what you were doing would be the violence and the killing and the exploitation of children.”

“We’re _protecting_ the children —” Gestalt began to insist.

“By putting them into a system they can’t get out of!” Myfanwy cried. “It isn’t right.” She was so tired. She was so tired of being angry over this problem, and she’d been angry about it ever since she first woke up in the rain. She’d been angry about it for her entire adult life, as far as she could remember. “It isn’t right that our choices are to be trapped in a system we can never get out of, killing and exploiting people, or to spend our lives on the run, treated like something that can be bought and sold. I don’t want either of those things for my life. I want a better choice.”

She thought of the letter in her pocket: _I’ve decided to give you a choice_. That was why she had texted them, told them she was in Istanbul and wanted to see that video. She had decided she didn’t like the choice that Bronwyn had made for her, that she wanted to be able to make it for herself like she’d intended to back before everything, when she still had all her memories.

But the choice she’d left for herself was just the same one Gestalt was offering her now, and she still didn’t like either of her options.

She didn’t want to have to pick the red key or the blue key. She wanted the best bits of both. And she didn’t think she could stand to live with the worst bits of either. 

“No,” Gestalt said after a moment. “No, you’re right. It’s not a fair choice. But if the options are vultures or an agency, I know which one I’d pick every time.”

“I just don’t think …” Myfanwy’s voice trailed off and she ran her hand through her hair. “I don’t know if I can do that again. I want something better.”

She gulped her drink and felt herself deflate. What a stupid thing to think: that she should get to have an option available to her that no one else had, something better and less morally compromised than what the rest of the world had to deal with. Why should she have a choice like that, when someone like Gestalt — who was so smart and committed and so clearly wanted to do good things for the world — when they were caught in the same trap she was in and had never managed to work out an escape for themselves? Why should she be the one who managed it if they couldn’t?

She hunched her shoulders and waited for Gestalt to tell her how childish she was being.

But what they said instead was, “Okay.” 

Myfanwy snapped her head up. They didn’t look wretched anymore; they were watching her meditatively, like someone watching a chess game, waiting to see what move a player will make to get themselves out of check.

“Okay,” they said again. “So then make a better choice.”


	5. Chapter 5

When Myfanwy met Gestalt at a bar in London three months later, all their bodies were there.

“You found it!” Alex said, eyes alight.

“That meeting didn’t take very long at all. Did Grantchester listen to your whole proposal?” asked Robert.

“Did it feel all right? How did it go?” asked Eliza.

“Was anyone following you?” said Teddy. “I told Conrad he should have brought me on security, the vultures will still be a danger for you —”

“— at least until you have an official position on the Court again,” they finished in unison.

“Well, you sent me extremely specific directions, and also my phone has a map on it, so finding this bar was very not difficult,” Myfanwy began, ticking off their questions on her fingers; “Conrad did listen to my whole proposal, and it didn’t take long because I am a concise and persuasive public speaker, apparently, and I think he liked it; no one followed me; and I already told you, we don’t know for sure if I’m going back to the Court at all.”

“Don’t we?” said Robert.

“Well, not officially,” Myfanwy hedged. “Conrad hasn’t formally accepted my proposal yet.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Alex. “Tell that to Ingrid, she’s already getting you new stationary and designing a new filing system because the old one was systems-focused and she says it won’t work at all for your new position.”

“Unless you changed your mind,” Eliza said. “And decided you didn’t want to come back. There’s still time.”

Myfanwy rolled her eyes. Eliza was watching her with nothing more than detached interest, but Robert was looking at the floor, Teddy was repeatedly popping their bruised knuckles, and Alex was gnawing at a thumbnail. Honestly, it was like they thought she couldn’t see the rest of them as long as they were only talking to her with one body at a time. 

“After all the work I’ve put in?” she said. “I’ve been building spreadsheets for the past three months until my _eyes_ bleed, I’m not backing out now. And anyway,” she added, pulling Alex’s hand away from their mouth and winding their fingers together, “it’ll be nice to be able to see … people. More easily.” 

“Yes, everyone at the office misses you,” said Robert in a voice that would have sounded bland, if Teddy hadn’t been sliding his foot between hers under the table at the same time. 

“But Myf,” said Eliza, leaning forward, “I really am serious. If you think it’s not what you want, I can help you get out of here.” 

“The whole point of this,” Myfanwy said, “is so I don’t have to run and hide for my whole life, and I don’t have to ruin anyone else’s life either. The Chequy _does_ exist for a reason, I know that. And if Conrad agrees to my proposal —”

“ ‘If,’ ” Teddy muttered, sotto voce. “The amount of background intel he’s been having me dig up, if he doesn’t say yes at least I’ll have enough files to brain him with —”

“ _If_ he says yes,” Myfanwy continued, “then the Chequy can be what it was always meant to be. Somewhere that can help EVAs without exploiting them, where we can be our own people without being trapped into lives we don’t want —”

“Yeah, I heard the speech the first ten dozen times you practiced it on me,” Alex observed. “Ow!” they protested as Myfanwy pinched the web of flesh between index finger and thumb in retaliation. 

“Say I’m concise and persuasive,” she demanded. 

“Absolutely not,” said Eliza.

“You’re repetitive and you tend to go on,” Robert said gravely. 

“You’re so _mean_ to me,” Myfanwy complained. “I’ll set Bronwyn on you if you’re not careful.”

She saw Bronwyn most weeks now, had dinner with her at least once a month, and was trying to gently broker a peace deal between her and Gestalt. It had taken a while to get there: a month for Myfanwy to reach out to Bronwyn after that day in Istanbul when Gestalt had told her that Bronwyn had traded a little boy’s life for hers, since she’d seen how little time Bronwyn had given her to make such a terrible choice. A month for Myfanwy to decide she wanted to try to keep her sister in her life. And then another week for Bronwyn to forgive Myfanwy for running away and call her back.

“You were all I could have,” Bronwyn had said, through tears. “After Mum and Dad. And it might have been wrong but I just wanted you out of there so badly —”

“I wanted me out of there too,” Myfanwy had said, because by then she had learned a little about Glengrove and the fire there, and Dr. Andrew Bristol, and all the things she’d been running away from that day in her rain-soaked trench coat. “But I can’t keep running forever, you know, Bron.”

Now, in the bar, she was starting to think she might finally be able to stop running.

“Ha! Your sister likes me now,” Teddy said with triumph. “Ever since we were on the same team in Pictionary, she says I’m a community-minded soul who will help the larger EVA population heal from its centuries of trauma.”

“On a fundamental level, it’s cheating for you to have multiple bodies on the same Pictionary team because you will always know what you’re drawing,” Myfanwy began to argue, but she was cut off from her larger speech when the waiter came over with a drinks tray. 

“Ordered already,” Eliza explained.

“Since we’re celebrating,” said Alex. 

They’d gotten her a martini, like usual. She knew a little more about what she liked, now; knew that she didn’t care for rum and that she liked tequila fine; that she liked wine with dinner; that she liked vodka in mixed drinks but not straight. But martinis had turned into her regular, and after three months, Gestalt had stopped looking at her like they were waiting for her to order wine instead. 

They still wanted her to remember more than she did, she could tell. They tensed up whenever she told them she’d gotten another memory back, and sometimes they’d mention something they’d used to do together before and give her this hopeful, expectant look while they waited for her to remember.

But they liked the ways that she was different now, too. The day they brought her to her flat, they’d been carefully not looking at her while she looked through her closets, and when she found that little box of razors and gauze she knew why. 

She had thought about the scars she’d found on the insides of her thighs, and felt around inside herself to think about whether she needed more of them. “I don’t think I need this anymore,” she’d said, and put the box in the bin, and then her gaze had fallen on the little glass birds on her windowsill. “Those are a bit creepy, aren’t they?” she’d said, and Robert had whirled her around and kissed her until she went dizzy.

“Are we toasting?” Myfanwy asked now, lifting her martini glass. 

“Yeah,” said Alex, “better should, shouldn’t we?”

“Since it’s an occasion,” said Eliza gravely.

“Conrad’s decision isn’t even final yet,” Myfanwy protested.

“You’re not fooling anyone with that,” Teddy told her.

“What about, to choices?” said Robert. 

“To making a better choice,” said Myfanwy. “And to being happy.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is complete and will be updated once a day.


End file.
